Colouring In DaVinci

Hi all, I'm starting third year in September at university and for a final year film I want to be able to produce a high quality, post production heavy, film to show at festivals after I finish my course. In order to do this I want to be able to colour correct and grade my work to suit a mood of a scene, and character.

I have studied colour theory, and have used Adobe Kuler to produce some test palettes of colours I want to be able to use in grading (triadic colour schemes might work well for the gain, gamma and lift). However, I have not had the oppurtunity to properly delve into DaVinci (my course focuses mainly on Nuke and then leaves us to do simple colour correction in DaVinci), so I was wondering how I would go about possibly 'eyedropping' colours from a saved .png of my colour palette into a test shot (with seperate colours selected for gain, gamma and lift) so I can see what it might look like. Alternatively, will I just have to manually grade the shot until it appears to match colours on my colour palette?

Thanks for any replies or guidance!

There is software that will do excatly what you are asking for, but it's not Resolve

If i HAD to do this, and i HAD to use Resolve, i'd probbaly turn to BCC's match grade, but as the only way to get a second source to match from is to add the shots as a matte, and then it's only the ungraded, unless you export each shot after every grade - it's totaly pig-like to do this, to the point of absuridity

it's simple, fast and easy in other choices of software tho, horriable almost beyond belief in Resolve, i'd advise you to find another workflow, or another software

One way would be to create a LUT in Nuke and use that as the grade base in Resolve. In Nuke you can eyedrop the palette in Grade node very easily, plus you can test out if the grade gives you what you want to achieve before delving into Resolve.

To create a LUT in Nuke, sandwitch your grade nodes between CMSTestPattern and GenerateLUT nodes. For what you want, a 1D LUT should be sufficient, but if you also want to selectively (shadows or higlights) desaturate or use other interchannel ops, create a 3D LUT.

Keep a keen eye on the state of your image while grading and creating the LUT. By default you probably create the LUT for linear data, but you have to make sure the LUT is applied to state which you can also achieve in Resolve, because LUT works the same only when image values it is applied to, is the same. If your input footage is, for example, gamma 2.2 prores and you use Resolve without color management, you must create the LUT in Nuke so that it also applies to original gamma 2.2 footage, not linearized image.

The colour palette of a film is the result of production design (sets, props, costume etc), the lighting created by the DOP, then finally the colour grade. To refine your colour palette within the grade you will need to manually adjust the overall balance of the shots, then adjust individual objects and areas to fit within your chosen palette.

If your original footage is miles away from how you want your film to look in the end, then forcing a look onto this will probably not turn out well. I would suggest your focus your energy on getting the production of the piece as close to how you want it to look as possible, then run through some Resolve tutorials and learn how to make secondary adjustments. This is a difficult and technical challenge for anyone new to Resolve, so your course tutors should still see that you've achieved something high end without you needing to really push an excessively strong look onto your film.

Show that you have thought about your look from the production stage and your tutors should recognise this

I was wondering how I would go about possibly 'eyedropping' colours from a saved .png of my colour palette into a test shot (with separate colours selected for gain, gamma and lift) so I can see what it might look like.

Although I completely disagree thoroughly with the technical approach, I can appreciate the artistic direction.

If you have a saved png test image, why not import it into Resolve and use it as a target to define a transform that you might use as an export LUT? This is similar to how we did it in the olden days, when a commercial client would bring in a page of Vogue magazine and we would grade accordingly. One clip at a time. Because that is how you do it. Not all of your source clips will present the values you will need to achieve your target look, and you are going to have to process them so that pixel A, with value [R,G,B] will flow through the matrix to end up being [R',G',B']. Ignoring Charles Poynton, now yelling at me from the sidelines that I should not be using ['] because its reserved for gamma-transformed values. Stia calma.

You can get a sort of analysis with an eyedropper that will display numeric values or representational locations on the transfer curve, for a particular pixel. But in truth, these are virtually useless numbers. What you are extracting is really the difference between where the pixel started out and where you want to go with it. Which is going to change for every source clip.

Is your intention to achieve a sort of zonal scheme, where the dark-, mid-, and light- areas of the transmitted image have their own tone characteristic -- ie, green blacks, aqua mids and amber highlights? That sort of thing?

Something else to try might be the auto-match feature that was incorporated recently... Its covered in the manual. Group a selection of shots, designate one of them (your png reference, either as a still or an exported movie) as a reference and then click *match to that* and see what happens. Could be a big surprise.

The only thing about this interesting craft (that in some ways keeps me entertained, anyway) is that it is a bit musical in the way that sometimes novel approaches, even mistaken ones can have serendipitous results that can be oddly pleasing. If we didn't have "alternate tunings" we wouldn't have "Start Me Up" for example.

jPo, CSI

was wondering how I would go about possibly 'eyedropping' colours from a saved .png of my colour palette into a test shot (with separate colours selected for gain, gamma and lift) so I can see what it might look like.

Avid|First is free and does this perfectly...

Media Composer, Nuke Stidio & Pablo do it, but for more cash

BCC's plug-in in Resolve CAN do it, but is hobbled by Resolve's OFX implementation, still if it's only one png to match to, i'd import that as a matte and feed it into OFX input 2 and use BCC's eyedropper inside high/mid/low match...

DS & SpeedGrade do it, but are EOL'd

Resolve, Baselight and Nucoda do not do it

or download Avid|First and see if the concept is workable before banging my head against a wall with Resolve

Any workflow in Resolve other than OFX means gradeing a shot, roundtripping to something with the right tool, importing the graded shot and the ungraded shot to be matched, matching, and then exporting that grade as lossy LUT, and importing the LUT into Resolve, applying to the shot and moveing on the the next shot... insane workflow

i haev asked for this for years now, the autowhite/black/color in Resolve are pretty much the dictonary defination of useless squared

Paul Dore's OFX plugin "Ballance" works well to ballance, but not to match, works far better than the native, but does not answer your needs

[Peter Chamberlain]

Take a look at the color compressor in the new Resolve FX. V14beta.

Alternatively, will I just have to manually grade the shot until it appears to match colours on my colour palette?

That would be my advice. As Joe says above, a lot of this may seem like it's a technical challenge, but it's more an artistic issue. So much depends on intent and context, sometimes an exact match may not be what you want. What you want is for a series of shots to look good in motion, and that's more important than a technically perfect match.

Still frame references and scopes are enormously useful, and those will get you through complex matching situations. An eyedropper can't take into consideration changing lighting conditions, different angles, and similar problems.

Hi all,

thanks for all the replies. I agree JPo and co. using Resolve to grade it exactly to my colour palette probably isn't the best idea. Though it might work for a still, the lighting can change throughout a scene, I think you're right in saying it's best to work with the shots as opposed to trying to make it work.

Someone mentioned in there (Sorry I can't remember your name) about trying to incorporate the colours I have in mind into my scenes through costume and lighting, so that less severe grading will have to take place, and I completely agree. As a course we are inclined to work with other departments at our uni (Such as film, fashion, photography students etc.) so I think they'll be able to help me out with some of that.

Cheers for all the responses, never been a part of a forum that's been so helpful!